Her voice died away in sighs; her eyes closed; her head fell back upon her pillow. Mrs. Yellam put Solomon down, rose to her feet, and hurried to the bed. In an instant her strong arms were encircling the wasted body, clutching it to her, trying to hold Fancy back, but knowing that she was, as she said, slipping away. Fancy spoke again, very faintly: "However did you manage to come back?" Mrs. Yellam listened, waiting, hoping, and almost believing, that an answer would be forthcoming. Her son, according to Colonel Tring, had been killed by a shell--killed and obliterated. She had known that death must have been painless. Fancy answered for Alfred, in a whisper that seemed to come from an immense distance. "I hear you, plain as plain. What? A--_shell_--! Did it hurt, Alfie? It didn't. But because of that you were able to come. You had to come for both our sakes--Mother's and mine. And such a night! You ain't a bit wet, neither.... Afraid, Alfie...? With you holding me tight as tight.... Oh, no." Susan Yellam heard a trickle of laughter. After that Fancy sighed twice, and then her small body relaxed. She had slipped away. * * * * * Dawn was stealing into the kitchen when Mrs. Yellam went downstairs. She was still curiously alert in mind, although very weary in body. After she had closed Fancy's eyes and performed the last services, she sat down by the bed to think. Dying people, as she knew, might entertain hallucinations. And Fancy, in health, exercised a lively imagination. That she should believe that she saw Alfred, so long and ardently desired, just before breath left her body, was not remarkable in itself. But, speaking for Alfred, repeating, as it were, information, Fancy had used the word "shell." Was this mere coincidence? Again, according to Alfred--admitting that he had come back--his return in the spirit was due not only to solicitude for his wife, but for his mother. She heard Fancy's feeble voice--"for both our sakes." And she had spoken of his appearance as "lovely." Susan Yellam's strong brain considered these three facts together with the uncanny behaviour of Solomon, now peacefully asleep in the next room. As yet, she had shed no tears, but, slowly, the ice about her heart was melting. Her thoughts turned to the form beneath the spotless sheet. It seemed so cruel that Fancy should be dead. Why was life given to young things and then taken away? But this gentle creature had not lived in vain. She had accomplished a task that had baffled Jane Mucklow and herself. Fancy had drawn Habakkuk from the ale-house, beguiled him from his cronies with soft words and smiles, made a better man of him. She had made a better man of Alfred. She thought of Alfred and Fancy together. Almost she believed that Alfred had come back.